HOUSTON — Mitt Romney drew boos, shouts and jeers from attendees while speaking here to the NAACP convention, who balked at his claim that he — not the country’s first black president — could best represent black America.

“If you want the president who will make things better in the African-American community, you’re looking at him," Romney said, as he was immediately met with loud shouts.

The Republican’s call to repeal the health-care overhaul — which forms a standard part of Romney’s stump speech — also drew loud cries that temporarily drowned out his speech, causing Romney’s reception by the group to veer from genial to borderline hostile.

“If our goal is jobs we must stop spending over a trillion dollars more than we earn,” Romney said, speaking to a community that has been hit hard by the economy. “To do this, I will eliminate non-essential programs like Obamacare.”

While the somewhat hostile reception is likely to dominate the cable news cycle and be used as evidence by Romney’s detractors that he’s out of touch with blacks and working-class Americans, the majority of the Republican’s talking points received polite applause, even in a period of heightened racial tension after the U.S. House recently voted to hold in contempt the country’s first black attorney general.

“I believe that if you understood who I truly am in my heart, and if it were possible to fully communicate what I believe is in the real, enduring best interest of African-American families, you would vote for me for president,” said. “I want you to know that if I did not believe that my policies and my leadership would help families of color — and families of any color — more than the policies and leadership of President Obama, I would not be running for president.”

Romney campaign aides dismissed the at times rowdy reception and said that “the door is open” now for Romney to make more inroads in the black community.

They cast the NAACP speech as an introduction to a community that they know is overwhelmingly expected to favor President Barack Obama in the fall — and a successful one at that.

“He had a standing ovation at the end. There was a lot more applause than disagreement,” said Tara Wall, a senior Romney adviser who was recently hired to reach out to African-Americans. “Obviously there’s going to be some disagreement. We understand that folks are not going to agree with us 100 percent. But at the end of the day, I think Governor Romney’s message was bold. He said what needed to be said.”

Wall said she didn’t believe Romney’s ideas were unpopular, even among the black community.

“I think again you may have been sitting in a different section than I was sitting in,” she told reporters. “I heard applause for a number of things that this governor communicated…I think coming in here he said there was going to be disagreement…You still at the end of the day are not going to back down to what he’s asserted all along when it comes to repealing Obamacare.”

But not all attendees were impressed, with some particularly irked that Romney dare suggest he could do more for black America than Obama.

“I thought it was baloney. I felt like it was just to appease us for the meantime to, you know, put the pacifier in the mouth. I wasn’t feeling it,”said Ciara Cason of Des Moines, who voted for Obama in 2008. “To me it’s just a bunch of stuff he’s telling us to get our vote, but is it really going to happen?”

Toni Hicken, who also supported Obama, said she was turned off by Romney’s willingness to go negative.

“He says, ‘Oh I’m the best one.’ Make us see you’re the best,” she said. “Tell us the things you’re going to do. Don’t bash Obama because he hasn’t gotten everything sewn up ‘snip snap.’ You can’t just do it in four years with no help.”

Hicken was surprised that Romney bothered to show up at all.

“I thought that was pretty bold,” she said. “I give him his props for coming. He stood his ground even when he got booed, so I will give him that. But I wasn’t impressed. I just wasn’t.”

Romney has been relatively quiet on race relations during the course of his campaign with the exception of a May visit to a an inner Philadelphia charter school where he called the education achievement gap the “civil rights issue of our time” for “people of color in this society.”

Here in Houston, he again framed education as a civil rights issue, drawing from the legacy of his father George Romney’s record as a civil-rights giant who advocated for change within his own party.

“If equal opportunity in America were an accomplished fact, black families could send their sons and daughters to public schools that truly offer the hope of a better life,” Romney said. “Instead, for generations, the African-American community has been waiting and waiting for that promise to be kept.”

Romney said that the “path of inequality often leads to lost opportunity” and that many disadvantaged children see education as out of reach “and their lives take a tragic turn.”

“Their impatience for real change is understandable. They are entitled to feel that life in America should be better than this,” Romney said. “They are told even now to wait for improvements in our economy and in our schools, but it seems to me that these Americans have waited long enough.”

Romney — who has rarely mentioned his father’s efforts in championing an aggressive civil rights agenda — praised his father for helping to create Michigan’s Civil Rights Commission and marching with civil rights activists.

“More than these public acts, it was the kind of man he was” that made him a powerful example, Romney said, “and the way he dealt with every person, black or white. He was a man of the fairest instincts, and a man of faith who knew that every person was a child of God.”

Romney’s speech here hinted at the hard road ahead he has in attracting black support, especially when Obama overwhelmingly won black support in 2008 and is likely to get more than 90 percent of the black vote again in 2012.

But the the Republican asked black voters to give him a “fair hearing.”

A former businessman who has staked his campaign on reviving the economy, Romney told African Americans that they have been hit especially hard by Obama’s economy and deserve a better lot.

“If equal opportunity in America were an accomplished fact, then a chronically bad economy would be equally bad for everyone. Instead, it’s worse for African-Americans in almost every way. The unemployment rate, the duration of unemployment, average income and median family wealth are all worse for the black community,” Romney said. “… Americans of every background are asking when this economy will finally recover — and you, in particular, are entitled to an answer.”

While Romney didn’t shy away from criticizing Obama’s record, he did tread carefully around Obama’s place in history as the nation’s first black president. He cheered the progress that allowed a black man to take the Oval Office, but made the case that the country still has a ways to go.

“If someone had told us in the 1950s or ’60s that a black citizen would serve as the 44th president, we would have been proud and many would have been surprised. Picturing that day, we might have assumed that the American presidency would be the very last door of opportunity to be opened,” Romney said. “Before that came to pass, every other barrier on the path to equal opportunity would surely have to come down.”

But, Romney added, “many barriers remain. Old inequities persist. In some ways, the challenges are even more complicated than before.”

Despite an at-times rocky reception, Romney said that the group’s “hospitality” would be returned and that, if elected, he would speak at next year’s NAACP convention.

”We will know one another, and work to common purposes. I will seek your counsel,” he said. “And if I am elected president, and you invite me to next year’s convention, I would count it as a privilege, and my answer will be yes. “

Obama will not address the NAACP convention. But an Obama campaign spokeswoman said Romney’s policies would have a “devastating impact” on working families and that “African Americans can’t afford ‘Romney Economics.’”